


Some Lives Are Linked Across Time

by Survivor_at_Midnight



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Because they're still figure skaters, M/M, Multiverse Theory, Technically not AU tho, because I'm a nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Survivor_at_Midnight/pseuds/Survivor_at_Midnight
Summary: "It is said that some lives are linked across time, connected by an ancient calling that echoes through the ages".The moment when Otabek first sees him in the summer intensive program, he doesn't just see a beautiful boy in arabesque on the bar. He sees a boy with gossamer wings fluttering in the sunlight. He sees a boy with hair streaming as he rides a midnight stallion. He sees a boy with smoky shadows and neon lights bouncing off his sweaty skin. He sees a boy with books all around him and an eraser in his mouth as he sketches. They all gave the same blonde hair and green eyes. They are all the beautiful boy in arabesque.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Some Lives Are Linked Across Time

It only takes a second or two for Otabek’s life to change. 

Yakov Feltsman’s summer ballet program is trying his patience, and he’s just about ready to pop an artery. He's tired and discouraged, because this was supposed to be the easy ballet class. The _novice_ class. He’s the oldest student here, yet he can't even handle this, and it's annoying that he’s at such a disadvantage. He'll never be competitive if he doesn't get it together soon. At the rate things are going, all of the other children here are more likely to grab a medal before he can even think about the podium, if only because they can do moves that he cannot. 

The instructor barks another order at him. Teeth grit hard against the burn of the stretch, he pushes into it until every muscle trembles from effort and his breath comes in ragged gasps. The soft snickers of the other students holding their pose and _patiently_ waiting for him to catch up only add to his ire. The line of perfectly copied dancers that circle around the room is only broken by him and his almost-but-not-there-yet attempt. It’s not without resentment that Otabek collapses out of form when the instructor wearily shakes her head at him. She turns to another student and asks him to demonstrate another move, and tells Otabek to pay close attention, as if he can somehow make up for his deficits through osmosis.

When he next raises his eyes, Otabek watches a small blonde boy effortlessly raise into _arabesque_. His movements are fluid and graceful, thin limbs stretching up to elegant lines, a perfect example of what Otabek cannot do himself. A thread of envy snakes its way up Otabek’s spine as brown clashes with viridian.

It only takes a second or two, but Otabek sees it all.

In the split second he locks eyes with the blonde, the entire world fuzzes around him. Everything else slides just out of focus, and the sunlight from the window blinds him just a bit. The outline of the blonde boy goes from sharp as a knife to soft as gossamer from one second to the next. He’s not entirely sure he’s not hallucinating, because now the blonde has _wings_. Not like a bird, but not exactly like a butterfly, with veins stretching up from the middle of his back and a soft green light pulsing from within. Suddenly the boy is a decade older and they’re in the middle of a field surrounded by a forest and the older boy is holding a flower crown out to him with the same green eyes. It is quiet, save for the rustle of the wind in the trees and the song of birds. The boy smiles softly at him. Otabek reaches for the crown and grasps a sword instead. 

He looks up, and the boy is another decade older and nods to him in determination, slinging a quiver of arrows over his back with a hard look upon his face. The wings are gone, and the circlet of gold that rests upon his brow glints in the sunlight as he mounts a midnight black stallion with ease, despite the armor he now wears. Otabek takes a step, as if to mount his own horse, and the horse shifts to shadow that bounces and writhes to its own beat. The ground pulses and vibrates under him, and smoke hazes the air. Flecks of colored light bounce off of blonde hair, and the boy reaches out and pulls him through a crush of people dancing in a dark room. Otabek dodges as best as he is able to, narrowly missing someone’s spilled drink, trying to follow the neon shirt as it flows through the masses like water. 

When the boy looks back at him, he’s a youth again, sitting on a couch and sketching something with an eraser between his teeth. He’s hunched over the sketch pad in his too-large sweater and draws quick lines over the paper that grow into a simple human form. Otabek places a mug of hot chocolate down next to him, a loud noise in the silence as the boy steals another glance and dashes out a few more lines. The pencil shifts into a gun and the sweater into a kevlar vest, and older green eyes full of fire and desperation turn to Otabek once more. Gun fire sprays the back of the pillar they are hidden behind, narrowly missing them both by mere inches, the impact echoing around the warehouse. One, two, three heartbeats and they’re both running full tilt from their hiding spot into enemy fire that doesn't come. When he looks back for the boy, he watches as a pale, lithe body with a fang-toothed grin and flashing eyes coils in and springs forwards over two hundred meters. Black claws extend from his own fingertips as he rushes after the boy, downing enemies he can’t identify. Bodies fall behind them and they don’t look back, and Otabek can hear the lack of breathing and non-existent heartbeat from the boy though they run whole blocks in seconds. 

When the young boy looks at him again, he lifts into an easy _arabesque_ with eyes like steel and fire as sunlight streams in from behind him.

* * *

Otabek abandons ballet after that class. The blonde scares him a little. But he cannot use that as an excuse for his career, so he leaves Russia for America and Canada for more training. Four years, two in each country, multiple restarts and a dozen new styles, and he can say with minimal uncertainty that he has found his own path to success. He glances at the bronze Worlds medal hanging on his wall. Leaving ballet was ultimately the right thing to do. 

The visions, though, he has not managed to leave behind in Russia. 

Sometimes, the snippets from that first day play themselves back, layering themselves over reality, sometimes at the most inconvenient times. Tied for first as most inconvenient are the time when he went to a club with Leo de la Iglesia and thought he saw a blonde boy in a neon top on the dancefloor while he was playing a set as the DJ, and the time when he glanced over into the next lane and thought he saw pale skin broken by wicked-sharp teeth running besides him on the interstate at seventy miles per hour. Although he can certainly pick out a few close seconds and thirds. 

Sometimes he catches more than just a snippet. One evening in Canada he found himself placing a mug of hot chocolate on the living room table of his flat. One blink later then the previously empty couch was suddenly occupied by a long-limbed blonde in a too-big sweater, drawing in a sketch pad. Only the boy lingered there, looking up every few minutes as Otabek carried on doing his evening chores. He even smiled up at Otabek as he came up besides the couch and watched the boy sketch for a few minutes more. Finally, when curiosity got the better of him and he opened his mouth to speak to the boy, he turned and found the couch empty and a cold mug of hot chocolate on the table. Jeans-Jacques Leroy had walked into his flat then with the spare key he had, and Otabek simply put the mug away, ignoring his visitor’s questions. 

Sometimes, it’s an entirely new scene that takes him completely by surprise. Not long after he had moved back to Kazakhstan, the most memorable scene was triggered. Otabek had an interview playing, an interview on Russian competitive athletes. Among them were Russia’s national figure skating team. The blonde boy from over four years ago was there. And it’s then that Otabek got to put a name to the face, after deliberately avoiding finding out more about the boy for fear of the visions growing out of control. But the interviewer didn’t seem to care about Otabek’s self-inflicted ignorance, and announced the blonde as the next speaker before he could turn off the stream.

 _Yuri Plisetsky_.

When Otabek first heard the blonde’s - _Yuri’s_ \- voice, he was thrown out of his room and into a photo shoot studio. Said blonde was grouching at the person playing with his hair. When he plays back the stream later, he’ll realize that vision-Yuri has said the same thing as interview-Yuri. But then, he watched vision-Yuri shake off the hairstylist and stalked over to where he was standing - off to the side and behind some stage lighting towers. The satin robe he was wearing was thrust into Otabek’s hands in exchange for the caramel latte that he bought. Otabek said something - for the life of him he can’t remember what - and Yuri threw his head back and laughed.

Every vision after that one has Yuri’s voice.

Otabek knows well enough that this can’t be normal. Even vaguely mentioning it to people results in them brushing it off as daydreams. But he knows that these aren’t daydreams, because if they were he would have some semblance of control over them. But he does not. Not over when they come nor what he sees nor how long they last nor how he feels or acts in them. They are too vivid to be dreams, and they don’t fade over time. If anything, each time a vision repeats he gets more details from them. So far, they have been harmless if mildly annoying, and he has resigned himself to the fact that they might continue for the rest of his life. 

Except.

He can’t help the urge to meet Yuri. To speak with him, to find some answers. All of these visions are centered around him, from the first moment he looked into those green eyes. Yuri must know _something_ about this. 

It’s an urge that is easily quelled, though. He needs to focus on this upcoming Grand Prix. Winning gold for his home will always be what he strives for. Whether Yuri will be there or not he doesn’t know, and what he will actually do should he come face to face with the blonde will remained unanswered until it comes to that. 

* * *

“Why are you staring at me asshole?”

Otabek has three thoughts that all fly through his head in the span of a second.

One: that was rude of Yuri, to say that to someone he’s met one other time in his life, but Otabek expects nothing less. If anything, a familiar and almost predictable feeling emerges as he regards Yuri. But how can Otabek expect _anything_ when he’s never actually said anything to the blonde before, _ever_? He’s never interacted with real-Yuri enough to form expectations of him, so where does the sentiment come from?

Two: this was probably going to be one of the only times he’ll interact with Yuri before the competition, one of the only times he can get his answers. If he waits until later or until after the competition, then there is no telling when their paths may next cross. And if it’s years down the line, he’s not sure that he can last that long with these visions. But how does he even begin to explain his visions? Of which - 

Three: he’s seeing Yuri, spitting and glaring at him and calling him an asshole, but they aren’t in the hotel anymore. They’re in some sort of concert room. Vision-Yuri holds a violin in his left hand, a bow and sheet music in his right, and his back hoodie has been replaced with a formal suit. Otabek himself is supporting a large bass, and a messenger bag of sheet music is hung off of his arm. Yuri’s brusque comment echoes off of the vaulted ceiling and the oak banisters and the gold gilt work, ricocheting at Otabek from all sides. The softened stage lights temper the sharp angles and planes of the younger man’s face, and Otabek struggles to come up with a response, despite having thought about meeting the violinist for years now. 

Otabek blinks and the hotel lobby comes back. Clearly, he isn’t in the right state-of-mind to handle this right now. So he turns and walks out, ignoring Jeans-Jaques and mentally making his excuses to Yuri, despite Yuri most likely not wanting them. Some other time, then.

* * *

‘Some other time’ is apparently later that evening, after a haphazard rescue and a motorcycle ride across Barcelona. The cafe they’re in is small and out of the way, and two steaming cups of tea are in front of them. Yuri is staring outside pensively, either too shy to start a conversation or thinking too hard on something. Otabek knows this somehow. He shouldn’t, but he does. And he also knows that Yuri knows he’s holding back something. He’ll just wait the younger boy out; eventually he will crack. Another thing Otabek is certain about with no reason. 

But he is not wrong. Yuri finally huffs and turns back to him, eyes backed by steel. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Ah, where to even start? “I’m not entirely sure you’d believe me if I told you, and if you did you might not like it.” Both true. People have told him that he was just dreaming before, and some went on to say that he was acting very much like a stalker. Eventually he just stopped mentioning it, and if anyone asked he lied and said that he just grew up and out of fantasizing about other boys.

Yuri scoffed. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know. Tell me.”

“Alright.” Deep breath. Otabek lets the thoughts wrestling in his mind loose, releasing his hold on them all at once. “I have these visions. I can’t control them at all, and they’re almost always of you. Sometimes you say things in my vision that you say in real life, even though there’s no way you should be able to do that. I don’t know why I have them, and that’s partially why I wanted to meet you.”

Yuri’s gone pale as his white denim jacket. Something like ‘oh my god’ reaches Otabek’s ears, and he worries that he’s ruined their new friendship. But then Yuri is leaning forward in his seat with a slightly hopeful look in his eye.

“We’re at a really old castle. I hand you a sword and pick up a bow and arrows for myself. I have on a thin circlet and you’re wearing a deep purple cape over your armor. I get on a black horse and you on a -”

“- a sandy dun with a black mane. And it’s sunset when we leave, some time mid-spring.” Holy shit. He can see the entire scene now. Before, this scene played out with heavy tunnel-vision, focusing on Yuri. Everything else faded away, unimportant compared to the focal point. But now it’s like the blinders are off, and Otabek can see it all clearly now. Down to the threading on the reins he holds, down to the complicated vine etching on Yuri’s longbow. It’s as clear as if he were actually riding the horse with Yuri next to him instead of in a tiny cafe in Barcelona. He tries for another. “We’re both behind a stone pillar in a warehouse, there’s gunfire from behind us. We both run out at the same time-”

Yuri trembles and flushes in all in one moment. “And your dumb ass got shot in the clavicle because you refused to wear the damn vest yourself before we left the mansion. You self-sacrificing bastard.” He starts in surprise and blinks in confusion. “Wait how did-”

Otabek does his best to smother his laugh and fails. “That happens sometimes too. Like earlier. I could tell you were thinking too hard on something and that I just had to wait for you to call me out on holding back something, despite never speaking to you before today.”

Yuri barks out a laugh. “Here’s one. It’s the middle of summer, and something happened to your bike. We’re out in some back yard fixing it because you refuse to go to a mechanic when you can ‘do it yourself’. These three cats come out of the woodworks-”

“The Grey Sisters, because two were almost completely blind and the last had lost an eye in a fight. Only one of the blind ones ever meowed for food.” Otabek has never had this vision before, but as Yuri speaks it filters in like sand art, one stroke at a time falling in place to create a picture as vivid as all the rest. The beaming grin on Yuri’s face at the mention of the cats slowly fades as he fidgets with his jacket sleeve.

“When did they start?”

“Over five years ago. When I saw you at that camp. I watched you lift into _arabesque_ and a half dozen images flooded me all at once, one mixing with the next. You scared me back then, because I thought you had made them happen. You?”

Yuri looks agitated that he can’t remember their first meeting. “All my life. I just thought they were dreams, until I saw you in the lobby. A carbon copy of the unknown man in my dreams, same voice, same build, everything. But I had never seen you before, at least that I knew of, so I didn’t understand why someone who I thought I had made up in my head suddenly was standing in front of me. And when I called you an asshole, I had another one.”

Otabek smiles wryly. “Concert violinist?”

“And concert bassist.”

Otabek is about to ask something, but one of the skaters from the Grand Prix Final steps up to their table and interrupts his train of thought - it’s Yuuri Katsuki. Yuri immediately clams up and shoots a pointed look to Otabek that he easily understands: _don’t mention it_. He ends up glaring at Katsuki and his entourage as soon as he receives Otabek’s nod. Said man simply pushes a pin into their conversation, hanging it up so that they can come back to it at their leisure. They’ll continue this later.

* * *

The next time their visions comes up in conversation is nearly half a year later in late April, during the off-season. Yuri, the persistent little bugger he is, managed to worm his way into a mini-vacation to Almaty with Yakov’s approval - provided they both keep to their off-ice training. Currently, they’re in Otabek’s living room, with Otabek reading on the couch and Yuri sprawled on the floor flicking through social media. Everything is normal, until Yuri bolts upright and stares blankly at a wall. Otabek eyes him curiously for a second, but when Yuri doesn’t respond he assumes it’s another vision and leaves him be. They’ve each seen the other go into a vision before, over Skype and in person, so it’s not anything new. Otabek only really starts to worry when Yuri begins to hyperventilate.

“Yuri?” He tosses his book off to the side and kneels in front of said blonde. Does he wait the vision out or try to bring Yuri back out of it? Neither of them have ever had such a physical reaction to one before - nothing past freezing in place and staring off into the distance. And while it’s resulted in a few funny instances in the past, it’s never gotten to this point. Yuri’s progressed to shaking, tremors running up and down his limbs. His eyes are blown wide in fear. A cold sweat had broken out over the blonde’s skin, and his fingers are curled into the meat of his arms, very nearly drawing blood.

Otabek gently lays a hand on the other’s shoulder and catches a glimpse of Yuri’s vision as he’s sucked in. But it’s not like normal for him, where he can see vision-Yuri through vision-Otabek’s eyes; this time, he _is_ vision-Yuri. And this one is _intense_. The sights and sounds are almost too much for Otabek to handle as they sweep them both along. Yuri is running through a dark forest, and he’s scared. Something is chasing him, and he can’t outrun it forever. The surrounding darkness hides the tree roots from him, and he trips. Otabek can feel Yuri’s base instinct of _survival at all costs_ and it feels foreign. It doesn’t feel like his emotions, and the fact that he can identify that at all is enough control. Otabek yanks himself back into reality and grabs Yuri, pulling him into his chest as the younger teen breaks out of the vision and trembles. When he finally feels Yuri grip back he breathes a sigh of relief.

“Oh god.” Yuri’s voice shakes. Otabek picks him up off of the floor and sets them both on the couch, letting Yuri cling to him as much as he wants to. “Fuck,” Yuri grumbles, “that was awful.” 

Otabek nods. “I saw a bit of it. What was chasing you?” He lets his fingers comb through Yuri’s hair, a habit he’s picked up after he found out the younger liked how it felt.

Yuri shrugs. “Some kind of monster. A few of them. Huge tentacles, like an octopus, with six crab legs and a beak instead of a head. It swam through the earth like it was water.” He speaks slowly as his heart rate comes back down. They both stay like that, wrapped together on the couch as the sun fully sets. Long after Yuri has stopped shaking, long after they’re both breathing normally. This vision has left them both a little rattled. Nothing has ever been quite as horrifying as this one, and that includes the ones with gunfire and mythical creatures. At least in those, vision-Yuri and vision-Otabek are confident in themselves and each other. Fear is the last thing on their minds. This was a flight for survival.

“What do you think they are?” Yuri asks after a long time has passed. Otabek blinks in question.

“The monsters?”

Yuri huffs and pinches him. “No, stupid, the visions. Why do we have them? So many of them are the same, but we see them from our own perspective, as if we were part of it and not just watching it.”

Otabek thinks for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It seems like each vision is part of a story. Some of them look like they belong in fairy tales and others could happen a week from now.”

Yuri picks his head up and rearranges himself on the couch so that he’s still tucked into Otabek’s side. “You’re always the same in all of them though. A huge self-sacrificing badass dork.” He sighs. “Is that why I’m so comfortable around you? I feel like I’ve known you forever, not just a few months.” He gives Otabek a pointed look to which the older boy huffs a laugh and resumes carding his fingers through his hair.

“It could be,” Otabek concedes. “But for the record, I enjoy being your friend, weird visions or not.”

“Hmph. You better.”

* * *

It’s Otabek who has the next jarring vision in his sleep. Yuri is the one who wakes him up from it.

There’s a war going on, it seems like. Only this war isn’t fought with guns and bombs. It’s fought with fire and water and lightning, the elements creating a veritable natural disaster around him. Out of nowhere a surge of water threatens to flood the battlefield he’s in, and before he can think his hands move in a set of patterns, and suddenly there’s a wall of bedrock between him and the living geyser. Vision-Yuri is beside him in an instant as the wall falls, holding a small tornado in his hands that sends the rest of the water up in a spray. Otabek can tell something is coming at them, and sends a wave of fire back at whatever approaches as Yuri collapses from exhaustion. The fire detonates the small bomb attached to the incoming knife, which gives them enough cover to flee before they’re overrun. Yuri staggers up and they run, Otabek dragging Yuri half of the time. They run until Yuri shouts a warning and blocks a bolt of lightning with his bare hands. 

“Otabek!” 

Brown eyes snap open to meet green. Yuri is shaking him with concern overtaking his features. Yuri, in his sleep clothes, in his apartment, in Almaty. Otabek releases a heavy sigh and drags a hand over his face. 

“That bad?” Yuri presses a glass of water into his free hand. Otabek sits up gingerly and sips it.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me. I just caught the end of it.”

“A war. Geysers attacking at random, lightning jumping out from the trees. I made a rock wall to block the water. You held a tornado in your hand and used it to push the water back.” 

“I assume I got hurt?” Yuri rolls his eyes just a little.

Otabek musters a shaky smile. “You tried to catch lightning in your hand. Damn well gave me a heart attack. You’re reckless.”

“Hmm. Yeah.” Yuri clambers onto the bed and opens up his phone, seemingly resolving to stay put until Otabek falls back asleep. If he can at all. Otabek just lets him, because nothing short of the rapture will make the blonde move now. Instead, he absent-mindedly lifts his hands and half-heartedly tries to recreate as many of the hand shapes as he can remember while he thinks on what he just saw.

“It was scary, though I wasn’t scared,” Otabek muses. “I knew I could fight, I knew how to counter attack, I knew you could handle catching the lightning - despite the fact that all of those things don’t really happen in reality. I was still worried about how we were going to make it out alive, but not because of the weird elemental stuff. I think we were outnumbered, or ambushed.”

Yuri doesn’t look at him, but his fingers have stopped moving on the touch screen. “How did you know? Like, how to do all of that?”

Otabek thinks back to the vision. He plays it through again, scene by scene. “I just moved. No thought to it. Like how we do when we do a Salchow or Axel on the ice. It’s easy for us because we practiced. We trained hard to be able to do a jump without thinking about it. It feels natural now. That’s how it felt in the vision. Like we had fought using that magic or whatever it was our whole lives.”

Yuri continues to stare at his phone screen as it goes dark. “Maybe we did.”

Otabek stays silent, waits the younger out. Yuri doesn’t disappoint.

“Maybe we did use that magic all our lives. Maybe we were trained in it.” Yuri puts his phone down and breathes. “Maybe that was a whole other life we lived. A life with its own backstory and its own rules and its own ending.”

And Otabek understands what he’s getting at then. “Our past lives. Somehow, we’re seeing bits and pieces of previous lives we lived.”

Yuri nods. “Yeah. I don’t know about where the magic went if they were all just in the past, but who the fuck knows. If there’s any trace of it left today it’s being hidden way too well. I doubt anyone would actually give us answers if we asked.” He turns to Otabek. “I don’t care though. So long as I can talk about them with you, let them all think we’re crazy.”

The older man snorts. “Yeah, let’s not go around convincing them that we are.”

“Our little secret? Sweet.”

* * *

Otabek has become somewhat used to the increased frequency of visions when Yuri is around. He is not quite used to Yuri’s strange ability to get him to agree to a fair portion of the younger’s ever-changing whims. One of which has them halfway around the world in Belize in less than two days. How Yuri managed to pull off getting them both permission for that in something like 39 hours is beyond Otabek, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. So he just packed his bags when Yuri commanded and boarded the plane when needed and found himself relaxing in the mid-June sun on the sandy beach of an island in the Caribbean. He’s been due for a true vacation for some time now, anyway.

Speaking of the blonde magician, Yuri comes out of the small beach house they’re renting for the week dressed in nothing but his swimwear and runs headlong down the dock and into the crystal water. He sends up a wave three feet into the air as he dives in. Otabek merely watches in amusement from his spot on the sand, book in hand. Yuri’s blonde hair pokes up out of the surf a minute later, and a pale arm waves at shore before diving back under.

“Reckless brat,” Otabek sighs to himself as he marks his place in his book. It’s really hard to deny Yuri anything, though, so he walks over to the edge of the dock and sits just as said blonde resurfaces.

“Get in, you old bookworm, the water won’t bite,” Yuri grins up at him and sends some more water up towards Otabek’s dangling feet. 

It’s a split second, but Yuri’s teeth were razor sharp as he talked, and his neck was slit with gills covered by honey-blonde hair, and then it’s gone. After a moment of hesitation, Otabek hoists himself over the edge of the dock and into the glass-like water.

The vision sticks around a little longer this time. As the seafoam clears from his vision, a long seaglass-green tail pulls the water around him like a small current. Otabek lets his eyes follow the curve of scales as it retreats a little, finding a pale body attached to the other end, topped with a swirling head of golden hair that glints like a coin in the light that refracts through the water. Two more flecks of green emerge from the cloud of gold, with a small rose pearl hanging on a chain from a sharp, pointed ear. Vision-Yuri grins at him with his razor sharp teeth and cocks his head to the side as he points to a small sandbar about a mile off.

Otabek blinks, and Yuri is swimming away, hands and feet pushing the water around him. Otabek doesn’t hesitate and follows. They swim further down the coast, racing each other all the way down to the sandbar before stopping and heading towards shore to walk back. 

Yuri shakes some water out of his hair and casts a sidelong glance at his friend. “So? What did you see?”

Otabek flicks some of his own damp hair out of his eyes. “How’d you guess?” He thought he was being careful in hiding his reactions. Clearly, it didn’t work like he had thought it would.

“You got that look in your eyes you have when you’re seeing something. Almost like you never saw me before,” Yuri shrugs and works his hair into a messy braid. Otabek rolls his eyes just a bit. 

“Apparently, you were a mermaid, or whatever the male equivalent is.”

Yuri looks at him like _he_ was the one who suddenly sprouted fins and a tail. “A _what_? Like, _The Little Mermaid_?”

“No,” Otabek concedes easily. “Unless Ariel had sharp teeth, pointed ears, gills on her neck, and completely green eyes. Though if that were the case Disney would be sued for not making it child friendly.” 

Yuri bursts out laughing. “Okay, that’s a little cooler I guess. And I guess no one at Disney ever saw a real mermaid anyway.”

“Probably not. I’d imagine they like to stay well away from the humans who are messing their whole world up.” 

“Sounds like I’d fit right in, humans suck.” Yuri turns and grins at Otabek. “Good thing you’re as weird as me, you’re one of the few I actually like.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Otabek quips back. They’re back at the beach house now, and Otabek starts gathering the ingredients for some food. “Go and take your long shower, Yura, I’ll have dinner going by the time you’re done.” He rolls his eyes as he hears Yuri do a poor imitation of him before traipsing off to the bathroom and taking his long shower. Otabek will let him have that one. It’s really hard to deny Yuri anything.

* * *

The first time Otabek deliberately keeps a vision from Yuri is in late September. 

Assignments have been released, and he and Yuri have been working themselves to the bone to be ready for them. The visions have died down somewhat; neither of them have had any that incapacitate them again, thankfully. Only now, Otabek is seeing more and more of each vision’s world. Instead of mere moments, the visions cover minutes or even hours of a life in the span of a blink if he’s lucky, a few seconds at worst if he is not. It’s still disorienting, coming out of a longer vision thinking half an hour has gone by when in reality it’s been two seconds. It’s like a skip in a DVD - only there’s a whole scene in that second of blackout. He hopes it doesn’t happen when he or Yuri attempts a jump, because that would cause quite the injury that neither of them can afford. 

This vision, though, comes when he is at home, putting leftovers into the microwave to reheat. He turns around and then the smell of something that isn’t food is in the air. It’s hot and spicy, enticing in a way Otabek has never felt before, making his blood burn in his veins. He goes from tired to alert in an instant and tracks the scent to his room. The cloying scent is strongest here, and some part of him just _knows_ that vision-Yuri will be on the other side of that door. That part wants to be on the other side of the door, taking the younger boy apart in the best way possible, to make him scream in pleasure. And that’s what jerks him out of his vision - he is Yuri’s _friend_. At least in this life he is, even if they were - apparently - lovers in another. Even if it is a vision, he won’t pry on something like that. So he resolves to keep quiet about this particular vision should Yuri ever ask about it, because even if that was a possibility between them, he wants it to be because they both want it and not because these visions make it seem like it's expected of them.

Yuri, it seems, can read minds from over thousands of miles away.

“Did something happen?” is the first thing he says as Otabek answers the incoming Skype call. Otabek summons up his best poker face and hopes Yuri doesn’t notice. Which, of course, means that he notices right away. “Out with it. And no lying either, or I’ll personally kick your ass from here to Greece.”

Time for a subject change then. And a little bit of stretching the truth. “I had another old vision. They’re longer now. I’m just worried one will hit when we’re competing and we’ll get completely disoriented with the time difference.” Not a lie, it is a concern. Just not the only one he has. But Yuri gets it right away, agrees wholeheartedly, and the topic is dropped in favor of continuing to piece together past lifetimes. Yuri’s started a journal that has steadily been filled with every vision that they can remember, and like the pieces to a hundred different puzzles they’re grouping them together and putting them in order. It fills their hours when they’re not on the rink, and Otabek takes a little comfort in the fact that at the very least they seem to be managing them rather well.

* * *

Maybe it’s a delayed reaction from his newest vision, but Otabek finds himself in love with his best friend. Oh, joy.

He’s now keeping two big secrets from said best friend, and it’s become rather tiresome. 

The thing is, it _feels_ real. He looks at Yuri through his computer screen and wishes he didn’t have to use a computer. He texts Yuri throughout the day and wishes to hear his voice. He sends snaps in response to Yuri’s and wishes he could take Yuri to all the places he shows through his pictures. He’s always worried about the younger boy, proud of him when he’s had a good run on the ice, sad for him when things don’t go so well. He wants to be there next to him every second of the day. He gets irrationally jealous of other people who get to spend time with him. So yeah, he is in love with his best friend, and it does feel real. But how much of it is him, and how much of it is a past version of himself?

When he calls Yuri one night, the blonde looks pensive again. Otabek patiently waits for him to finish introspecting. 

“We did all of these crazy things in our past lives, right? Fought wars, controlled the elements, whatever. You think we could learn to do it now? The way our past selves did?” Yuri shifts and hides behind a fringe of hair. This isn’t what he wants to talk about, but Otabek will answer anyway.

“I don’t think so. Otherwise it would still feel natural to do all of that. But I do think we get something out of each life.”

Yuri barely glances at his camera. “Oh yeah? Like what? How to skin a rabbit? Because that's the short end of the stick if I ever saw one. And nothing cool either, like using a sword or catching lightning. Totally lame.”

The admonishing look Otabek sends him is lost. “Like how you knew that I liked books without having seen my bookshelf before. How I knew you liked cats before I met Potya. How we know what will make the other upset, or how to cheer each other up without actually explaining it. I think we’ve just always been together, and I’m okay with that. You’re my best friend, Yuri, and I don’t regret any of it for a second, weird visions or not.”

Yuri grumbles something about him being a ‘stupid corny bastard’. Otabek just shrugs in response. So what if he is? This time, he didn’t lie.

* * *

Yuri finds out both of Otabek’s big secrets at the end of the European Championships. Oddly enough, by revealing them to Otabek as though he didn’t know them already.

They’re in Graz, Austria, and both of their medals are neatly packed away in their suitcases while their formal wear has been replaced by sweats and t-shirts as they binge watch some animated show with English subtitles. They’re working their way through their second Jack Daniels fifth, cutting it with soda to avoid a complete hangover in the morning. Otabek can decidedly hold his liquor much better than Yuri, who has become prone to rambling on and generally acting much younger than he actually is.

“Beka?”

Otabek blinks at Yuri in mild confusion. Well that was new. And very much reminiscent of what Vision-Yuri would call him sometimes. Only most of the time, Vision-Yuri was sober, and was dating Vision-Otabek. A part of him aches for Real-Yuri to call him that every day for the rest of his life.

Real-Yuri actually _frowns_ up at him and shakes his arm when he takes too long to respond. “ _Beka._ ”

He can’t even be bothered to hide his smile. “Yes, Yura?”

“I think you like me.”

Wait, _what now_? Otabek never mentioned any of this to anyone. He must not hide the confused shock he feels very well, if a drunk Yuri can see it and feel the need to explain himself.

“I mean, cuz you like me in all the visions and I like you back in all the visions and I wanna like you back now too. So you like me right? Cuz you act like you do and I just wanna know.” Yuri rambles on, leaving Otabek in the dust because he’s still stuck on ‘I wanna like you back now too’.

“Yura, time for bed. We’ll talk more in the morning.” Here’s hoping Yuri forgets this conversation. And Otabek supposes that this makes Big Secret Number Three.

Yuri grows quiet and sullen in a heartbeat. “But I wanna talk about it now.”

“I know, but you’re drunk and I’m not completely sober either.” Hell, here’s hoping _he’ll_ forget this conversation in the morning. He’s regrettably a bit too sober for that to happen, but he can hope.

“So?” Yuri pouts. 

“ _So_ ,” Otabek emphasizes, “we will probably want to talk about this when we aren’t drunk.” He wrestles Yuri under the covers despite the younger’s loud disapproval, and lays down on top of them on the other side of the bed. Yuri is quiet in his nest of blankets for all of two minutes.

“So you don’t like me?”

Otabek sighs tiredly and throws an arm over his eyes. “I told you before Yura, you’re my best friend, and I don’t regret a second of it. I do like you, a lot, and I also like being your friend. I’ll take whatever I can get, but I want you to like me because _you_ like me, not because of a bunch of visions.”

“But I do like you.” Yuri’s voice is soft and defeated even as he protests. “I like you because you’re my best friend. Because you look out for me and keep me safe like when we were in that gunfight and you made me wear the vest. Because you always wanna take me new places like when we were both in the orchestra. Because you listen to me for real like when I was an art student. You’re so nice to me and I like you. The visions just showed me what to look for. But I do like you.”

He’s crying by the end and damnit if it doesn’t nearly break Otabek in two. The older man sighs and shifts under the covers, gathering Yuri up in his arms and holding him close. Maybe he does like him back. 

“I like you back too, Yura. Really.” It’s not so hard to admit it after all of that, and Otabek feels like an idiot for waiting so long. 

Yuri sniffles. “Really?”

“Really. But we are still talking about this in the morning.” He throws caution out the window and kisses the top of Yuri’s head. “Sleep now. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

* * *

The next morning is a bleary drag for the both of them. Otabek spends much of his time trying to keep Yuri from lighting the world on fire while fighting off his own headache. It takes a meal, half a gallon of water each, and most of the morning before they begin to feel even remotely human. 

And apparently Yuri wasn’t as drunk as Otabek thought. 

“Are we talking about last night or what?” Yuri grumbles around his _pirozhki_. Otabek tries not to find it endearing and loses. 

“How much do you remember?” gets him a slap across the arm that smarts more than he’s willing to let on.

“I’m not a total lightweight, asshole, I remember most of it. Including running my mouth like a whiny brat, and you saying that you liked me back.” Cue pointed glare. “What’s there to talk about? I thought I was clear when I said I liked you like nineteen times.” 

“You were. About that a least. But not about why it mattered so much that I had to like you back first,” Otabek pointed out. 

Yuri rolled his eyes. “For the same reason I assume you never told me - because you’re also my best friend, and if you didn’t like me back I’d have lost you. Dumbass.”

“ _That’s_ assuming that I figured out that I liked you a long time before you told me, Yura.”

“You did.”

“Not untrue. How did you know?”

Yuri huffed, blowing a few strands of hair out of his eyes. “Because I started noticing how you were acting like the visions, like the ones where we were already together or whatever. If not for that I might not have noticed as quickly.”

Otabek takes the time to flick through all of the moments he has memorized by now and notes that he can see it too. How Yuri will call him names but never mean them, how he knows when Otabek needs a distraction and when he just needs some quiet, how he knows how much his family means to him and goes out of his way to look out for them too. Little bits of real-Yuri are scattered through all of the vision-Yuris, bits that Otabek loves, vision or real. If he had bothered looking instead of running he would have seen it. He is an idiot.

Yuri bites into another _pirozhki_ and rests his head on Otabek’s shoulder. “So are we putting a label on this? I don’t really care if we do, so long as I get to keep you.”

Otabek wants more, but he can’t bring himself to force anything onto Yuri. “We don’t have to. And you’ll have me forever, it seems.” If Yuri is okay with things as they are-

Said blonde eyes him and pokes his cheek. “If you have a problem with it, we can. I don’t care either way, is all. You’re mine, and that’s all that matters.”

Yuri has gotten good at reading Otabek, it seems. Not that Otabek is surprised, Yuri has always been able to understand him. “I suppose you’re mine then. Let everyone else think what they will.” Otabek wraps an arm around Yuri, and resolves to finish this story with this beautiful blonde boy with green eyes. Just like they’ve done hundreds times before.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Fun little tidbit, I had actually made this up for the 2019 OtaYuri Big Bang, but my actual submission Playlists of an Executant felt closer to completion than this did at the time. But I did fully intend to publish this, so here we are! Hope you all enjoyed me playing around with the Multiverse Theory.
> 
> Oh, you don't know what Multiverse Theory is? Well let me explain dear friend!
> 
> Multiverse Theory, at it's core, is the theory that 'everything is possible and nothing is real'. Or, that every conceivable different outcome probably exists as a parallel universe, therefore making all of these 'fiction' stories 'reality' in a sense. So yes, in theory, there is a world where your mother married your weird high school teacher, there is one where you're super famous, there's one where Youtube doesn't exist, etc. etc. So IN THEORY, the entirety of the Yuri!! On Ice universe is actually real. And there's probably one where there's people writing what they think are AUs about us without knowing that we actually exist. Who knows.
> 
> Here, I'm playing off of the subtheory that our senses of deja vu and unexplainable instincts and sixth senses are actually our consciousness utilizing experiences and memories from our alternate selves in other parallel universes. Kind of like we temporarily slip into the nextdoor timeline and live the same five seconds over before being drawn back home. Which is why Yuri and Otabek know each other so well despite only being friends for like a few days. They're heavily drawing off of their other versions.


End file.
